22 rimfire smooth bore

i am curious about something,i know that at one time they made 22s without rifeling.these 22s shot a type of bird shot.anybody out there that can give me killing distances for small game or varmits. old semperfi

I have an old Cooey smooth bore .22 in my collection. I have never shot it. CCI still makes the "bird shot" for .22 smoth bores. From what I have read, they have very little killing power and are good for about 15-20 feet. I think they were designed originally for shooting at birds in warehouse type buildings or barns where the shot wouldn't cause any damage to the building.

I have an old Winchester model 61 that is designed for rat shot. I would assume that it is a smooth bore. When I was younger I would spend weekends at my uncles farm and take out the rats in his barns. It worked great for that.

Often called and labeled by Remington as Routledge Bore on their pump 22's to be used in a parlor game of Mo-Skeet. I had the Rem 121 Routledge pump and it got the best distance and pattern with the still currently offered Winchester crimped #12 shot. I found the CCI shot shells kept too much of the shot in the blue capsule giving a limited pattern and shot count. The Winchester and I believe Federal still offers a crimped shell, both shoot open like a shotgun shell. Even with these like stated earlier the killing distance would be about 20 feet. Probably most often used as pigeon control inside a building so as not to put stray holes in the roof. I've used the Winchesters out of a revolver to be a snake killer. The effective kill range for snakes was no more than 5 feet.

Sad thing is, it was totally un-neccesary to make them smoothbore...
rifling has little-to-no-effect on ratshot at close ranges.

The difference between a Marlin 25MG Garden Gun and any other 25-series was the smooth bore.
The downside is that's ALL the MG is good for, snake/rat/close range pest control...
whereas you could use the ratshot ammo in any of the .22lr/.22WMR 25-series Marlins and still use them for other things.